 |
|
|
||||||||||||||||
PRIEST'S EXPERIENCES OF THE SACRAMENT OF THE SICK
By Father Bernard J. McGuckian S.J.
Central Spiritual Director
Pioneer Association
Since my Ordination to the Priesthood took place on a July 4th, it was appropriate that my first assignment would be on the other side of the Atlantic. Within two weeks of that memorable day in North Antrim in 1970, I was walking around the wards in the Metropolitan Hospital, 1901 First Avenue N.Y. 10029, a large establishment at the intersection of Spanish and Black Harlem, overlooking the East River.
In my early days there, as I was feeling my way round in both the priesthood and the hospital, I strayed into a room where a tall African-American male was “on dialysis”, something I’d never seen before. “I’m not yet ready for the Last Rites, Father” he quipped on seeing me.
His words came back to me all these years later when thinking about the Sacrament of the Sick and the Anointing that goes with it. His remark, made in fun but half in earnest, was a throw-back to a 200 year period in the Church, between the Black Death in the 14th century and the Council of Trent in the 16th, when Anointing had been gravely neglected. During the Black Death, with people falling down dead like flies, the priests were doing their best to cope. (The Nursery Rhyme “Ring a ring a rosy” with its line “We all fall down” may date from that dreadful plague).
An unfortunate consequence of it all was an immediate association of ideas between the arrival of the priest, the Minister of the Sacrament of the Sick, and death shortly afterwards. In the popular mind, the presence of the priest was seen as a harbinger of death. The result was that people only asked the priest to come when hope of recovery had been abandoned, death was imminent and the dying person sufficiently conscious to understand what was happening. Where this mentality still lingers on we have a job on our hands.
The effect of the Sacrament of Anointing is that both body and soul are strengthened for what lies ahead. For the majority of recipients this means many more fruitful years of life.
Because it was assumed that he would die overnight, the First Holy Communion of a member of my religious community, Fr Prionnsias Ó Fionnagáin, took the form of the Sacrament of the Sick and Holy Viaticum (Communion as a support and strength for the journey into eternity). He still goes out for his mile walk every day, has just published a directory in the Irish language of all the Irish Saints and Blessed in the Liturgical Calendar and is celebrant and preacher every Sunday (again in Irish) at a public Mass.
He celebrates his 100th birthday on February 18th, 2009.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A personal reaction to the Catholic Identity Card – a Priest's perspective.
By Father Owen Gorman
Over the years, as a priest, I like so many of my colleagues, have been called to the scene of horrific accidents to minister the sacraments to Catholics. In the dead of night or in the full light of day, we have been with people in the last few moments of their lives, preparing them to meet God. It is our joy and our privilege to do this and the relief and consolation this ministry brings to the dying person and to his or her family is palpable.
But in such moments the thought has often crossed my mind: would someone call for a priest to come to me, if I met with a serious accident? Or would they simply presume that since he is a priest then there is no need to bother. It is good to be reminded that priests need the ministry of others priests and no more so when they are involved in a serious accident.
The Catholic Identity Card alerts people to this fact, for it carries the instruction that in the event of an accident or emergency to contact a fellow priest to come to one's aid. The presumption, made perhaps by some, that one doesn't need to call a priest if a fellow priest has had an accident is an erroneous one and this card is a powerful corrective to this way of thinking. It is a summons to action, a crucial reminder, to 'call for the presbyters of the Church' (Jas 5:14), so that the saving grace of Christ may be ministered.
I carry this card with me all the time now. And while it is my hope that in the course of my ministry I will never suffer a serious accident and need emergency help, I trust, that if the worst happens, then this card will alert the person who finds me to the fact that I am a Catholic and to contact a priest for me. This card could just make the difference between the presence of a priest beside us in an emergency or his absence. I carry this card because I know which of these two possibilities I would prefer.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Who Really Ministers?
By Father Michael Screene MSC
Katya shared the fate of hundreds of thousands in Stalin’s Russia. With her German background and eight years old, she was exiled to Kazakstan about 1943. Most of her family and friends did not survive. She met another exile, married and gave birth to four children in quick succession. Soon a widow, she reared her children in the harsh religious and economic conditions of the time and place. Eventually, in the Brezhnev era, her family stole back to Russia and got work in a Collective Farm.
A phone call was my first contact. Katya’s son heard there was a Catholic priest in Saratov, 50 kilometres away. He phoned, explaining his mother was very ill, probably dying. Could I come?
I drove out, over icy roads. Family members were ready to welcome me. I chatted with Katya, heard her first and last confession, gave her communion, anointed her. We talked for a time about the past. Before leaving I asked her if she had any worries or fears.
“I am not afraid”, she said. “I am so happy a priest could come before I die. All my life God has been with me, every day. He was always near. You don’t speak German and I don’t speak Russian very well. But we’ve enough to understand each other. Thanks for coming. What’s your name again? I will pray for you”.
I knew that she would. As I drove home over an ice-sheet for 30 kilometres, the snow sparkled like diamonds and something sparkled in my heart too. A question would not leave my mind, “Who was really ministering here?”
Katya died the next wednesday. The following Sunday, a beautiful young girl, a university student came to me after mass. “I want to come to church here,” she said. “I’m Katya. You came to my grandmother last week”. I knew grandmother Katya was still praying and not only for me.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Reach of The Sacrament
By Father Brendan Purcell
Frances, a retired professor of literature whom I’d got to know in the college where I taught, was flying back to her home country and was rather depressed as she felt the illness she was suffering from would lead to her death. Although she is Catholic, the tradition in which she had grown up, the university she had taught in Europe, and her husband, were secularist and atheist. So it was only in Ireland—where she had a teaching position after retirement—that she went to Mass each week and prayed in churches.
I was seeing her off in Dublin airport with Teresa, a friend of Frances from South America who belonged to the Seventh Day Adventists. I had brought the holy oils and the ritual with me, and in the airport asked Frances if she would like to receive the Sacrament of the Sick. She very definitely did, and was most devout as I read the prayers and when I applied the holy oils. All her worries seemed to go away immediately, and in fact, when she returned to her own country, her doctor as able to tell her that her illness wasn’t serious.
Most interestingly, the administration of the Sacrament of the Sick had a big effect on Teresa. She remembered that her mother had had her baptized in a Catholic church even though the family was deeply committed to Adventism, with several of her brothers becoming Adventists pastors. However, since the administration of that sacrament in the airport, Teresa continued to bombard me with questions about the sacraments and the saints, particularly Our Lady. In recent months she has been attending Mass every Sunday, says the Rosary every day, and feels that getting to know Our Lady is one of the greatest gifts of the Church.
I know it is only a matter of time before Teresa becomes a full member of the Church, through the Sacrament of Reconciliation and the Eucharist. But what I learned was that presence of Jesus in the Sacrament of the Sick can reach beyond those to whom the sacrament is administered to, into the souls of those who are open to His presence, just as his miracles on earth didn’t only help those He healed, but those around Him who saw His mercy in action.
(‘Frances’ and ‘Teresa’ are not the real names of these people.)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
